Archive for the ‘Reviews U-Z’ Category

 

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

A Glutton for Punishment

May 6th, 2009

wolverine
In a land where every dinner is a TV dinner and people watch remotely, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” will mollify the packs of Nielsens swooping down on America’s megaplexes.

But the first movie to christen the blockbuster season is a long 107 minutes of nothing special. With an estimated $150 million budget, the producers have concocted to make a quite unspectacular popcorn flick. When a film is endowed with such a massive expenditure as “Origins: Wolverine” one wonders where the money went when compared to the sardonic rush of “Iron Man” or the fully-realized macrocosm of “The Dark Knight,” because it’s an uninspired project void of the magic of those franchise foundries. Perhaps when you’ve dropped this magnitude of an exorbitant investment into a tepid film, producers are forced to tack on an ambiguous and presumptuous conclusion suggesting a wholly underserved sequel.

Essentially a prologue to the X-Men films, “Origins: Wolverine” begins with the backstory of the Logan/Wolverine character and his brother, Victor Creed/Sabretooth, as children in the 1840s Antebellum South. They bound through successive U.S. wars as indestructible soldiers during the mundane opening credits until they are recruited into a post-Vietnam War commando unit. Adopting distinct military tactics, the brothers become estranged, each hunting the other until the inevitable last reel.

Filmed unconvincingly by director Gavin Hood, it’s an untextured effort with no discernible cohesive tone or pace. Action sequences are neutered by the special effects. The over reliance in post-production fiddling means that real thrills and genuine tension are jettisoned for clunky, newfangled visuals.

The lame script by David Benioff and Skip Woods is equally lackadaisical but there are moments when it’s just plain infantile. As he stalks his lumberjack younger brother in the Canadian Rockies, Victor scrawls with his fingernails into the wooden bar of a dark, unpopulated tavern in the middle of nowhere that for no apparent reason is the size of a jumbo jet hanger. The quizzical bartender asks Victor, “You’re not from around here?” Moments later, when Logan enters the bar, Victor peers over his left shoulder and drawls, “Look what the cat dragged in.” As the brothers race towards each other in the cavernous watering hole and begin to engage in battle, the barkeep peeps up with “Guys, take it outside.”

Burdened by the soporific screenplay, the game cast plows through. Bravely sporting mutton chops throughout history, Liev Schreiber lends Victor hubris with a perverse glint. Danny Huston, looking like a short back and sides Anthony Bourdain after a summer of prix fixe dinners, adds a trenchant interpretation to the commando unit chief, William Stryker, but like his co-stars is encumbered with dopey dialogue. Ryan Reynolds enhances his reputation as a funny fellow with a smart-alec turn as commando Wade Wilson, yet when he returns later in the film as Deadpool, a mutated government project, he is muted with bandages and stitches. (The film hints at the mutant’s irony; just maybe not the one the makers intended.)

Brooding, with trapezius muscles inflating with every swipe of his rapier hands, Hugh Jackman certainly put the requisite hours in the gym. But the character is written so rudimentarily that there’s no connection to his tortured plight. In several instances, Logan expresses himself with a vengeful cry to the heavens as the camera bids a clichéd retreat into the clouds. But at the very least the perpetually tank topped and frequently shirtless Jackman could bring hairy back into vogue. While his charm and charisma are rarely utilized to their best in this film, he has the affable hunkiness to play a part like Thomas Magnum. You can envision a mustached Jackman beaming behind the wheel of a Ferrari. (May I suggest William H. Macy as Higgins.) Again, a big screen presence for small screen tastes.

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Waltz with Bashir

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

April 17th, 2009

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From the opening moments of marauding, snarling dogs to the final harrowing wails of widows, the animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir” is a thunderbolt, visually and emotionally provocative, arresting and riveting.

Director Ari Folman was a 19-year-old solider in the Israeli Defense Forces which invaded Lebanon in the summer of 1982. More than 20 years later, the unsettling dreams of Boaz Rein Buskila, a close friend and fellow solider, prompted the filmmaker to delve into his own murky memories of his war experience, and Folman quickly finds himself especially hounded by one particular, recurring dreamt moment. Told through the recollections of Folman, his military comrades, and the noted Israeli journalist, Ron Ben Yisahi, “Waltz with Bashir” is an eyewitness account of the Lebanese War and the army’s heedless complicity as the Lebanese Christian Phalangists massacred as many as 3,000 defenseless people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. It is a gripping view into the psychology of the after effects of the war experience. Concrete memory and hallucination coalesce, often tormentingly; and dreams stir before consciousness admits. All the soldiers seem shadowed by the Michel de Montaigne axiom that “nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

Each of the colleagues that Folman visits conveys a remarkable story of their war remembrances, from his buddy, Carmi Cnaa‘n, who moved to Holland and found untold wealth as a falafel distributor to Shmuel Frenkel, the patchouli-soaked martial arts devotee. But the episode chronicling the experience of Roni Dayg deserves special praise. Combining artistry and pathos in a soldier’s incredible story of survival and then massive survivor’s guilt, the scene begins in daylight as Roni escapes from his flaming tank in a hostile village battlefield until he musters an ingenious getaway by water at nightfall, only to subsequently become consumed by a pall of shame as the sole member of his unit spared. His story is dramatized seamlessly between the moods of the harrowing, in-your-face action and the serene, lovely underwater animation. There is a soulful, evocative air to much of the movie, which is ably accentuated by a luminous score from Max Richter.

The imagery created by the team led by director of animation Yoni Goodman is superlative; at times, the animation carries an almost 3-D intensity. In a scene illustrating exquisite detail, the camera moves through a lush grove as cautious soldiers, slivered with sunlight, scan for combatants who have just attacked their convoy, until, through a raft of thin trunks, they lock onto their attacker. Enhanced by a realistic quality and style, “Waltz with Bashir” is coated with a smoky, dusty, earthy viscosity.

“Waltz with Bashir” ends with a jarring, searing sequence — an indelible memory — and enters the pantheon of the most profound war films.

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Watchmen & Coraline

All Hands on the Bad One

March 26th, 2009

coraline
I haven’t read a word or leafed a page of “Watchmen.“ This isn’t out of any contrarian strop. I can understand why folks become fervently obsessive with these works; I’m just not into the genre. But I don’t think it matters that I had no background with the books when I chose to see the ubiquitously hyped flick. Regardless of how lauded or important the source, a film exists as a completely separate artistic entity. One can argue that an acquaintance with the original inspiration helps with context but even this position is immaterial because a film must be viewed on its own merits. So I saw “Watchmen” with no preconceived notion and no specific expectation. But what is still surprising about the film based on the reverentially adored DC comic book series is how the transfer to the screen feels so pedestrian.

After a vibrantly choreographed fight sequence which culminates in the death of one of the Watchmen in 1985 and a vivid, slow-motion opening title sequence of flashbulbed World War II era photograph stills, the film settles into standard fare. The gist of the plot centers on a collection of formerly publicly vilified superheroes regrouping to solve the murder of their cohort, The Comedian (played by Robert Downey Jr. look-a-like Jeffrey Dean Morgan). There are themes aplenty; from the Cold War to imperialist capitalism to vigilantism, that a film with a more confident script and assured hand would have feasted on. But too often these critiques seem more like a suggestion than an examination.

The film carries a refreshing R rating, and it is admittedly a welcome change to view a multiplex cartoon blockbuster chockfull of cursing and nudity. But then, director Zack Snyder helmed “300,” a film which resembled an International Male catalogue with Tom of Finland serving as a wardrobe consultant. His 2006 box-office bonanza was asinine twaddle but its unflinching visual style was arresting and hardly spartan. “Watchmen” lacks the cohesive tone and the consistent visual dynamism of his predecessor. Too often, it takes a smoke (and mirrors) break. This is especially evident in a prison scene which is small, ordinary and unconvincing. If one was hoping to be swept into another world, then “Watchmen” disappoints.

One aspect of “Watchmen” that is most perturbing is the trite use of music. It‘s a soundtrack too familiar and too obvious. The decision to score a Vietnam battle scene with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries or play Simon and Garfunkel‘s “Sounds of Silence“ over a funeral falls flat, even if used ironically or plucked from the novel.

The cast delivers performances of variant quality. Patrick Wilson, a burgeoning notable American actor, plays Dan Dreiberg, the most contemplative and openly vulnerable of the superheroes, with a believable poignancy while he exudes a Batman-like swagger as his alter ego, Nite Owl. Rorschach, played earnestly by Jackie Earle Haley as though Danny Bonaduce was a member of Gwar, needs a chill pill or, at the very least, a Ricola.

But a few of the main characterizations are less convincing. As Silk Spectre, Malin Akerman looks like Xena’s little sister, with limbs like an Incredible, but her acting is hardly malleable. Topped by a Spandau Ballet haircut, Matthew Goode, so brooding in “The Lookout,” is a stilted Adrian Veidt, the former superhero Ozymandias who has become the wealthiest man. And Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan is annoyingly omniscient as he delivers every line like a stilted pontification. It doesn‘t help that in his CGI’d getup he regularly plods around with his tadger out so that he looks like a particularly horny Blue Man Groupie.

So, “Watchmen” is not a terrible film but perhaps in its own way this is a worse fate: not kitschy enough to merit midnight madness and not poor enough to be hokum; it’s just ho-hum.

As uninspiring as “Watchmen” is, with a budget that exceeds its grasp of magical moviemaking, it’s a treat to behold the vision of Henry Selick in “Coraline.” The director of stop-motion animation gems such as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “James and the Giant Peach,” Selick and his hearty crew have fashioned a meticulous work drawn from the Neil Gaiman novella, which I haven‘t read either.

The tale of Coraline, an intrepid young girl, voiced by Dakota Fanning, who discovers an alternate universe within the walls of her new home, is a precise, precious and ornate 3-D feast. She has moved with her family from Pontiac, Michigan to the remote Northwest so that her author parents can write untroubled by distractions. But even in these secluded surroundings, her mother and father (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) indelicately indicate that their only child, who is simply a kid being an inquisitive kid, is a bit of a bother. Sporting a look that suggests she started listening to Sleater-Kinney at a precociously young age, Coraline discovers a nook in a wall of their Victorian rental which leads to a passageway where her “other” parents, now doting and not distracted, lavish her with fanciful foods and presents. Their buttons for eyes are the first, most visible sign that their devotion may come with a price.

In her new environs, Coraline lives amongst notably surreal characters, especially the neighbors who live in the adjacent apartments of the massive house. Two eccentric actresses, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, bursting out from the top of their corsets and fawning over their pampered Scotties, entertain her with their almost indecipherable bickering, the interplay enhanced by the vocals of comedy duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. In the alternate universe, they are transformed into cheeky mermaids in an uproarious scene perhaps more readily relished by adults. She also encounters Mister Bobinsky, a gymnastics performer of mind-boggling dexterity voiced with gusto by the mellifluously throated Ian McShane. Bobinsky is the ringmaster for a mice circus which performs a rousingly choreographed drill team song for the young girl. Coraline is befriended in both worlds by a wise black cat voiced by the honey dripped tone of Keith David.

The film is a stunning and exceedingly attractive achievement, enhanced by 3-D but not beholden to it. A kooky kaleidoscope of a garden is a shimmering blancmange of reds, oranges and blues. It’s also filled with beautiful, simple touches — the crystalline texture of snow, a shifting rug under Coraline‘s feet or tea leaves swishing in a cup are visual delights made all the more wondrous by the knowledge that these moments were created by the patient, hands-on care of artisans minutely shifting figures. Buoyed by Bruno Coulais’ soundtrack of jaunty harp music, the film is steadfastly clever while alternately and, in many instances, simultaneously creepy and funny. “Coraline” is an enchanting triumph.

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The Wrestler

Out of the Cellar

March 14th, 2009

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It’s good to have Mickey Rourke back.

The best actor whose career was born in the 80s seemed lost to us. By the close of that decade, he had amassed a stellar resume which promised his ascension into the 1990s as the most vital leading man of his generation, and then he was gone, vanished from prominence, vanquished by his demons.

His resume in the 1980s has only grown in stature since. In the wondrous “Diner” and evocative “Rumble Fish,” he was a man among boys. In “The Pope of Greenwich Village” he let Eric Roberts concoct fidgety affectations while he simmered with a succulent slow burn. The versatile Rourke could play Charles Bukowski and a lothario with equal credibility. And he went toe-to-toe with a prime De Niro in “Angel Heart” giving the devil as good as he got.

But even then he seemed like a throwback. Blessed with the tumescent presence of Robert Mitchum yet the fragile vulnerability of Montgomery Clift, Rourke was the quietest big presence on the silver screen. He was the New Romantic Brando.

Yet, despite this talent meshed with charisma, no actor of any significance became a non-entity for longer. It was only 10 years between “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “The Godfather” for Marlon Brando. And while it seemed that John Travolta was an outcast longer than he was, in those 14 years between “Urban Cowboy” and “Pulp Fiction,” he still persisted with boffo box-office numbers in the “Look Who’s Talking” flicks. When an actor generally enters the wilderness — say a Ryan O’Neal or Michael Keaton – typically its a self-imposed retirement or the lack of acting pedigree catching up to them.

Three years ago, Rourke reappeared in “Sin City” as Marv, the gentle humungous, and while he exuded his signature pathos, Marv was a green screened creation in an ensemble piece. But here, as Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson, a former wrestling superstar toiling in a northeastern minor-league circuit, it’s Mickey in flesh and blood. Randy pines for his glory days in the 1980s when arenas (both wrestling and rock) were his temple. Now, he performs (with good grace) to dozens perched in rec center folding chairs in matches he crams around his schedule hoisting goods at a local supermarket.

It’s astonishing to see Rourke in his leotard sporting a ripped upper body with a hulking chest, guns protruding from his shoulders and, most disconcertingly, a face brutalized by boxing, by Botox, or maybe almost two decades of bad choices. However, despite his massive body, or perhaps because of it, one is drawn to his hands which, like his voice — that unmistakable husky whisper — are strong but capped with fingernails hearty and delicate, like finely sliced almond.

Rourke exudes a quiet, understated strength early in the film, especially in the genuine camaraderie he shares with his younger, fellow wrestlers. The backstage scenes are casual, heartfelt, and touching as they express respect and reverence for the “Ram,” which he accepts with gracious reluctance

“The Wrestler” is an imperfect film as it charts Randy’s hopes for a comeback. Marisa Tomei is a top notch actress, and she excels at what she does in this movie, but the part of Cassidy, a stripper who Randy befriends, feels incomplete. Similarly, Randy’s attempts to reconcile with his estranged daughter, played defiantly by Evan Rachel Wood, seem slung together. And the characterization presented of Todd Barry’s harrying boss is a tad too dickish.

But perhaps what most blights “The Wrestler” is what makes it most riveting. The film is overpowered by Mickey Rourke’s presence. It’s hard to watch the movie and not constantly gawk at his performance. It’s head-shakingly amazing to realize that Rourke was 55 during the filming. To give this feat some perspective, Brando was 47 when he returned to play the burnt-out, cynical Paul in “Last Tango in Paris.” This feeling of wonder isn’t just in the first few scenes; it permeates every shot. But if his performance puts the film in a stranglehold, perhaps this is to be expected from a movie so saturated in the irony of seeing an 80s wrestling superstar pining for a career resurrection played by an 80s icon who is delivering one.

This film was clearly built around Rourke and for this the credit must go to director Darren Aronofsky, who insisted, ultimately, that Rourke was the logical choice for the role. The widely circulated story states that Aronofsky first offered the part to Nicolas Cage but had second thoughts almost immediately so that we were spared the absurdity of Cage, who one feels currently doesn’t have either the girth or the chops to handle a stripped-bare part like “The Ram.” Why expose an audience to a spandexed, steel Caged-match when you have a national treasure like Rourke?

Aronofsky shows admirable versatility by shooting “The Wrestler” in a gritty, unadorned style so unlike his last effort, “The Fountain,” an ornate, existential exercise replete with Hugh Jackman as a bark eating monk. It was overstuffed with video techniques, celestial imagery and a cluttered metaphysical vibe. He presents this film with a hand-held intimacy and a washed-out color palette, the visual style matching a main performance savagely raw and real. In a movie shorn of the abstract, perhaps it’s fitting that when Randy, enjoying a beer in a tavern with Cassidy, hears a favorite song, it instantly creases his battered face with a knowing grin as the 80s classic sums up not only the hope of “The Ram” but the rebirth of Rourke.

Round and round
With love we’ll find a way just give it time, time, time, time
Round and Round
What comes around goes around
I’ll tell you why, why, why, why

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Wendy and Lucy

A Haiku of 16 Syllables

January 31st, 2009

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Not all films have to be the cinematic equivalents of novels, hulking celluloid tomes tipping the three-hour mark, so distended they should be fatted with an intermission. Some are poems. Two years ago, “Old Joy,“ a film meager in budget and a mere 76 minutes long, emerged, like the two reacquainted buddies and protagonists who spend a weekend in the Oregon woods, as a thoughtful meditation on friendship renewed, reviewed and ultimately reconciled as something lost from the kinship of youth. It cleverly steered clear of pretentiousness when insufferableness seemed unavoidable. Kelly Reichardt, the director of the resonant “Old Joy,” has returned with “Wendy and Lucy,” a movie chronicling the plight of a young woman ensnared in spiraling circumstances. But regrettably, the new, slight film is a vague and incomplete cinematic missive; Reichardt and co-writer Jonathan Raymond have scripted a haiku of 16 syllables.

A rapid cross-country trip shown in the pages of her journal has brought Wendy (Michelle Williams) and her dog, Lucy, westward from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. As we are introduced to them, Wendy and Lucy walk through a clearing at night where they chance upon a few folks huddled round a campfire. The quiet and reserved Wendy tells a camper that she’s on her way to Ketchikan for work, and a wild-eyed dude (Will Oldham) overhears and delivers a rambling, delinquent story about his escapades in Alaska. So we know where she’s come from and where she’s headed, but the 20-something Wendy herself is a mystery. In the subsequent 80 minutes, as events become more harrowing, the taciturn Wendy provides precious few tangible glimpses into her state of mind or her reasoning. There’s the barest acknowledgment of her past other than the one pay-phone call she makes to an uninspiring father and disinterested mother. Williams, an actress of mounting reputation, is a perceptive performer, adopting an unfeigned, haunted countenance and a Joan of Arctic Circle haircut, but even she can only say so much with her eyes.

In his essay on the works of a mercurial filmmaker, “David Lynch Keeps His Head,” David Foster Wallace writes,

“When his characters are sufficiently developed and human to evoke our empathy, it tends to cut the distance and detachment that can keep Lynch’s films at arm’s length, and at the same time it makes the movies creepier — we’re way more easily disturbed when a disturbing movie has characters in whom we can see parts of ourselves.”

In “Wendy and Lucy,” when the wrenching moments occur, I experienced an indifferent sensation, based, I’m assuming, on my tuning out because Wendy’s character provided me with so little insight. I had become disconnected. The film is disquiet inhabited and the distillation of loneliness, but instead of gaining insight into these concepts, I simply felt ground down and uninvolved. Films steeped with bleak themes can be difficult to watch but they don‘t have to be obtuse. The abundantly talented director Ramin Bahrani has recently chronicled merciless quotidian working class lives in New York City in the films “Man Push Cart” and “Chop Shop” where fate conspires, sometimes unfathomably cruelly, against characters but there’s history, detail and humanity to these people so that the predicaments have context even when they are heartbreaking.

Reichardt has an evocative filming style, and she certainly attempts to utilize the un-said to speak volumes, a device more successfully employed in her previous film. But it can be asserted that the silence is only poignant in a narrative film (Spaghetti Westerns excluded) if it supplements the dialogue; from a story telling perspective, we cannot be expected to contend that what is left in the margins is more poignant than what is in the script. Compared to “Wendy and Lucy,“ the subdued storytelling of the far superior “Old Joy” is an overbearing party guest of exposition. To paraphrase the poet Stevie Smith, Wendy is not waving, nor is she drowning; indeed, her hand might be telling us very little at all.

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Vicky Cristina Barcelona

American Paella

October 31st, 2008

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I

“Vicky Cristina Barcelona” could be a two-hour tonic for a weary American or a tourism brochure for a Gaudí city or the catalyst for an expatriate odyssey. But even for those without wanderlust, the film luxuriates in an adult, intelligent, and airy manner, gently titillating, seriously flirting.

II

Javier Bardem is a “Brings It” dude, as in “He Brings It.”  Like current contemporaries of this insatiable machismo, Clive Owen and Daniel Craig, he exudes rugged confidence with a rumpled insouciance. In “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” even his Adam’s apple is tumescent.  

III

Fittingly, he burst onto the scene in Bigas Luna’s lusty 1992 “Jamón, jamón” as “El chorizo.”

IV

At an age where men, especially, have a startling tendency to turn inwards, mistaking obstinance for self assuredness, the 72-year-old Woody Allen is able to create as a screenwriter a multitude of distinct characters who are independent entities, viable and vibrant, who are seeking and searching for that which fulfills them. Consequences aren’t damned but honesty and openness are virtues.

V

You can detect the recalcitrant Allen persona in Rebecca Hall’s Vicky, squirming with an internal struggle between a Wall Street fiancé with polo shirts tucked into chinos and Bardem in shirts which seem buttoned with a lick of the lips. It’s navel gazing of an entirely different sort.

VI

Scarlett Johansson is an enigma.  Possessing art-house cache with turns in “Ghostworld” and “Lost in Translation,” one has suspected that her talent is more (pants) suited for a shitting on the dock of a Michael Bay blockbuster.  But she embodies Cristina effortlessly.  In the moment at a late supper, where she and Vicky first meet Bardem’s artist Juan Antonio, she sums up her character‘s sense of adventurous and autonomous sexuality.  While Vicky is loathe to reward his advances as a first impression, Cristina respects Juan Antonio’s chat up lines as refreshing, bullshit-free effusions. It is a hallmark of Allen’s dexterous script that he provides both women with believable, reasoned and witty insight.

VII

For a country where lad mags have to remind couples that they could have sex at times other than bedtime, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a paean to spontaneity, an example to statesiders to not only live in the moment, but to live in your moment.  

VIII

Penelope Cruz is a powerhouse.  Reminiscent of Anna Magnani in “The Rose Tattoo,” Cruz prowls the screen as Maria Elena, Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, but hardly his ex.  A few years ago, Cruz faced a tenuous time in her career as she made a strange transatlantic crossing in projects like  “Woman on Top,” “Vanilla Sky,” and “Sahara.” But, this year, with a role of this magnitude along with a brave performance in “Elegy,”  it appears her days as Steve Zahn’s sidekick may become a trivial memory.

IX

Graced with a gossamer disposition but buoyed as an actress with acute strength, Patricia Clarkson shines in a memorable cameo as the dignified but disquieted Judy Nash, who provides Vicky and Cristina with a villa for the summer, and perspective. Ensnared in a marriage to a mashed potatoes financier, Judy finds herself in a desiccating relationship bereft of turmoil but lacking in passion, made more desperate by her husband’s obliviousness to her unease.

X

The soundtrack is a flamenco-infused delight of many moods. From the opening credits of the jaunty, toe-tapping “Barcelona” by Guilia y Los Tellarini to the dramatic, sensual guitar work of Juan Serrano on “Gorrion,” the music is riveting, essential and a character all its own.

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Wanted

Bullet the Blue Sky

August 31st, 2008

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After the art-house buzz for his modern vampire fables “Night Watch” and “Day Watch,” Timur Bekmambetov became a hot property. Atmospheric and spooky, “Night Watch” was riveting entertainment. Providing a welcome twist to the oft-told subject, it contained tangible menace in an epic style as well as a fantastic animated sequence and wonderful set pieces — especially a finely constructed scene which followed the path of a single screw along its journey as it fell from a plane into the bowels of a building. The sequel “Day Watch” ratcheted up the intensity into an apocalyptic showdown replete with a soundtrack of thrash metal and haunting chorale choruses which was still nimble enough to successfully blend tenderness and acute comic touches into the mix.

In his Hollywood debut, “Wanted,“ Bekmambetov showcases absurdly badass moments but only in fits and starts in a film which feels comparatively restrained and incomplete to his earlier works.

Yet, the opening scenes of the film form the foundation for an interesting social satire of a downtrodden cubicle dweller recruited to become an assassin. There’s a Walter Mitty air to the character of Wesley Allan Gibson (James McAvoy).  And the rat race symbolism is unrelenting but effective. However the film veers away from this treatment and spends too much time in training-the-new-guy mode so that it loses this intriguing perspective and lurches towards becoming a  pedestrian affair.

Sadly for a talent as compelling as Bekmambetov, “Wanted” doesn’t really let go.  It lacks a certain sense of abandon, and even fun. When a film doesn‘t appear to embrace the joke of something as absurd as the “Loom of Fate“ you’d suspect that the director was a misanthrope, if you didn‘t know any better.  But both “Night Watch“ and “Day Watch“ revel in humorous moments, even if many of them are black. Perhaps because, unlike “Wanted,“ he co-wrote the screenplays for his two earlier hallmark films, he felt more comfortable finding the gradations of humor amidst the seriousness.  But it may be simply that in his first effort in the States working with Universal Pictures he felt impinged.  Even this film’s signature visual effect of bullets bent by mind control lacks the relish associated with Bekmambetov’s style.

So if you want a mind-blowing shoot ‘em up, then there’s none better this decade than the criminally unseen “Shoot ’Em Up.” Blessed with the marketing budget of, say, the national Green Party, “Shoot ‘Em Up” snuck into theaters last fall for a mere few weeks before being consigned to cult status: You can’t get more cult than a stupendous Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti flick that due to its tepid American box office allegedly opened in a single Australian theater.  So only a few lucky Melburnians got to see the Michael Davis film which was outlandish, inspired and breakneck. Conversely, while “Wanted” was bestowed with a gargantuan promotional campaign, it is comparably slight and underwhelming. 

The attraction for McAvoy to the role of Wesley Allan Gibson is apparent. He seems to revel in the forlorn Gibson, with his exhausted countenance, crumply dress shirts, and vigorously bitten fingernails. But the rest of the characters are completely unblinking, unfunny automatons. They are exceedingly cool but vacant.  As the master of the assassins, Morgan Freeman has perfected his chilled persona so expertly that it would be refreshing if we could describe one of his characters as “bat-shit crazy.“ Angelina Jolie traipses across the set likes it‘s a runway.  She apparently was paid a great deal to stretch, pout and smirk; not so much for acting. Terence Stamp brought along his startling blue eyes and sonorous voice for an absolute throwaway role which suggests he must have had a spare Bank Holiday weekend.

The ending to “Wanted” is well-crafted nonsense.  A major component of the conclusion is that characters have to make dramatic, ultimate choices but because there’s been no development for any role other than McAvoy’s, there’s no context and the decisions feels forced and vacuous. Sadly, for a filmmaker with as much vitality as Bekmambetov, it’s disappointing to meet this finale with a shrug.

Hopefully, with his next venture, reportedly the third installment in the “Watch” trilogy, he will revert to completing a film worthy of his audacious talent.  He is capable of making films simultaneously over-the-top and under control. Just maybe not in Hollywood, yet.

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